


Some Sunny Day

by mbuzz



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drinking Songs, F/M, Gen, Heavy Drinking, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Steve has a sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 10:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6513943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mbuzz/pseuds/mbuzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha shares a drink.  Steve shares a story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Sunny Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bridge_Agent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bridge_Agent/gifts).



> EDIT: The absolutely and stunningly wonderful [thestanceyg](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thestanceyg/pseuds/thestanceyg) made an amazing voice recording for this fic which you can find [HERE](http://www.mediafire.com/file/m4k8x6mvbmjtoi9/Some+Sunny+Day.wav) and I very much recommend you listen to it if you like podfics!!
> 
> This is for Bridge_Agent. I challenged her to write fluff and I'd write something that didn't involve utter crack, fluff and/or Darcy Lewis. That was six months ago. She came through with [flying](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4685837) [colors](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4632387) and I only just now managed to pump this out. 
> 
> The title is from the song [We'll Meet Again by Vera Lynn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHcunREYzNY)
> 
> Shout-out to my betas and my hand-holders, [CatrinaSL](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CatrinaSL) and [MissMorwen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMorwen) who are lovely, lovely writers. Seriously, go check them out :D

 

 

 

 

Steve wasn’t expecting her, but he wouldn’t be surprised to see her.

The slow slide of the key in the lock was a courtesy. She was letting him know she was coming in, giving him the chance to decide whether or not to throw her out.

He hadn’t given anyone a key, at least, not that she was aware. Naturally, that didn’t stop Natasha from having one.

He didn’t turn from the window or speak to her as she let the door click shut behind her, nor as she took a seat at the table behind him. His shoulders were squared, defiant to the weight of the world on them, and his hands were in his pockets. On anyone else, the posture would suggest nonchalance, but she knew it was just a way to hide how his hands were clenched into white knuckled fists, echoes to the clench of his jaw and the firm set of his mouth. The waning sun cast a long, formidable shadow around the rigid lines of his dress uniform.

His silence was the opposite of unfriendly. Had she been anyone else, he would have bent to the will of proper decorum and offered her a drink or feigned an interest in small talk. That he remained as he was, with his back to her, was a sign of trust. She didn’t speak, fidget or even turn on the lights when dusk began to fade into night. Rather she remained a silent presence at his back, waiting for the sun to set and give him the cover of semi-darkness before calling his attention.

“If you stand still any longer, you’ll turn into that statue in Brooklyn.”

It was a terrible statue and it looked nothing like him, but the comment had its desired effect. He huffed a short laugh and turned to her, the ghost of a smile on his lips. The medals and buttons on his coat gleamed in the moonlight as he peeled it off and slung it over the back of the chair across from her. He loosened his tie and looked down at the table with a frown on his face. She had placed two bottles there, each with its own shot glass flipped over the cap. The bottle nearest to him gleamed oddly in the moonlight, its beautiful gilded etching telling a tale of alien royalty.

“Thor gave you an entire bottle?”

“No,” she answered. “Thor gave _you_ an entire bottle.”

Steve’s frown deepened. “I didn’t think he was the type to read the obits.”

“He isn’t. I told him you needed one and he didn’t ask why.”

Steve’s lips quirked. He set the shot glass on the table and picked the bottle up from its base. He examined it carefully as he shifted it from hand to hand, unbuttoning and rolling up first one sleeve and then the other. The runes on the bottle were complete gibberish, but she knew the artistry appealed to him.

Natasha plucked the shot glass off of the vodka before her, cracked open the top and tipped the liquid into the glass, but made no move to drink it.

Steve smirked and made a show of carefully unwinding the intricate latch and breathing in its contents. Natasha rolled her eyes, but made no comment.

When he finally sat down, a stream of moonlight brought his face more clearly into view and Natasha saw that though he was still smirking, it did very little to hide his grief. Her lips pursed slightly. She’d seen more than her fair share of pain and dealt out even more, but she’d never be flippant about the pain of her friends. No one was more surprised than she was, but Steve had wormed himself into that very exclusive group of people. Of course, as his friend, she knew better than to openly acknowledge his pain with words. Instead, she held up her shot glass and waited for him to fill his and do the same. They toasted silently and drank.

Steve licked his lips and rubbed them together, his brow furrowed. “This is stronger than the stuff he usually has.”

“He must think highly of you.”

He poured and drank two more shots. Natasha matched his pace.

Steve examined the latch of the bottle carefully and unwound it further, removing the top entirely. He saluted Natasha with the bottle and took a long, long drink from it. His eyes watered slightly as his throat worked around the burn. When he finally came up for air, he coughed and licked his lips again. He sank back into his chair and breathed deeply, his eyes closing slowly.

“Is that a challenge, sailor?”

Steve let loose an undignified snort and his lips twitched. She was baiting him and they both knew it. “I‘m Army, lady, and don’tcha forget it.”

Natasha hid her amusement behind her Russkiy Standart as she, too, took a long pull from it. If Steve’s plan was to fall squarely into his cups, she’d be a poor friend to let him do it alone. Fortunately, she had a second bottle of vodka in the bag at her feet, just in case he had chosen to do exactly this. Her heart clenched for him and she took a second, longer pull.

When she looked at him again, he had an odd look on his face. Having never seen him so much as tipsy, Natasha suddenly realized she had no idea what he might be thinking, or what he might do. She stiffened and watched him carefully. He must have noticed her staring because he turned his gaze to her, his eyes beginning to take on the glassy look of the drunk. She lifted her brows in question.

He took another long pull from his gift before answering, his words slurring slightly. “Just realized I've never been drunk before.”

Natasha’s brows shifted from questioning to surprised. “Not even before the serum?”

Steve stuck out his bottom lip and shook his head. “Nope. Too sick. Tried but threw up ‘cos of the medicine I was taking. _Medicine is so much better now._ ” This last part he said very emphatically.

Natasha took refuge behind her vodka once again, her smile dangerously close to too wide to hide. Steve was an adorable, harmless, storytelling drunk. She filed this away into her bank of secrets she’d cherish and never share.

“Then with the USO there wasn’t ever any _time_ , really,” he continued, his slurring increasing. “The girls were separate from me ‘cos that’s just how things _were_ , and I wasn’t interested in drinking alone.”

“How did you find out you couldn’t get drunk?”

Steve chuckled humorlessly and the sound cut through Natasha like a knife. She would have apologized, but crueler than asking would be to dismiss him before he answered. He twisted the bottle between his fingers on the table before drinking slowly.

“I tried twice,” he answered finally. “The first time was after Bucky and the Howlies agreed to join me in the war and they had me open up a tab at a pub in London. Bucky had just been ignored by Peggy—aw, jeez, you should’ve seen that. You should’ve seen _Peggy_.” Steve’s face went slack with awe, lost in the memory of Peggy Carter as he knew her. “She walked into that pub and you could hear every jaw in the joint hit the floor. She was the most beautiful dame I’d ever seen and she talked to _me_. You gotta understand, that had never happened before. Bucky was...” Steve trailed off and laughed darkly. “In retrospect, Bucky was trying to crawl into the bottom of every bottle he could get his hands on and I figured it was just the war getting to him like it did everyone else. I didn’t ask. But now I know it was what Zola did to him.” Steve spat the scientist’s name and his hand curled into a fist on the table as he stared at something deep within its surface. He unclenched his jaw after a moment and drank again. “It was his idea to get their ‘fearless leader’ soused for the inauguration of the Howling Commandos. I guess he was just trying to see how much it would take to get him drunk.” He shook his head ruefully before he shrugged and continued. “Anyway, Dum Dum and Dernier were already well ahead of the rest but _they_ wanted to get me soused and throw me out that door after Peggy and into her tent. Idiot ideas of drunk men. Peggy would’ve killed me _and_ the Howlies and our story would have gone very differently.”

His fond, distant smile widened when he saw Natasha was smiling, too. “She sounds great,” she said quietly.

“Oh, she was a bombshell in a red dress that night, but she could and did keep every single army hooligan in line with a look. I tell you about that time she shot at me?”

Natasha barked a laugh. “No, I think I’d remember that, Cap.”

He chuckled. “I had it coming.” He reached up and loosened his tie further and pulled it over his head. He flicked open the top buttons of his shirt and used his tie to wipe at the beads of sweat at his brow and tossed it onto the table. “There was a song by Vera Lynn that was everywhere during the war. Couldn’t walk two blocks in London without hearing someone singing it or whistling it. Bucky eventually managed to get a proper drunk on, because he was laughing like he used to when we were kids and he started singing that song so loud and so bad, we all started singing just to drown him out! I was still stone cold sober, even though they’d had me down a full bottle, each of them, so it was on me to drag them out when the barkeep started glaring. It was like herding cats, getting those Howlies—singing and three sheets to the wind!—out the bar and back to base without waking up the whole infantry and pissing off the General.” He started giggling in earnest. “They were all sick as dogs come morning and Peggy made them run the toughest drills I’d ever seen, just out of spite!”

His smile slipped slowly from his face and he sighed. He looked away, hiding his face in the darkness. Natasha busied herself by finishing her first bottle and starting on her second. She was a quarter through it before he spoke again and all at once.

“The second time I tried to get drunk was after Bucky fell from the train. I could’ve gone to any pub in Europe, probably, but I went back to that one. It had been bombed out. It was a fucking mess, but somehow there was still booze behind the counter and it was the stuff Bucky had been drinking and had tried to use to get me drunk. It was awful, but it had a distinctive taste. I don’t remember the name now, just the look of the bottle. I wasn’t really trying to get drunk, though. I just wanted to get his screaming out of my head. I thought if I could remember that night as clearly as possible, when we were all singing and laughing and drinking, I could drown it out. It didn’t work. Peggy found me there that night and tried to comfort me. That didn’t work either, but it was... a kindness.”

Steve picked up the bottle on the table, swirled around the contents to get an idea of how much remained, then knocked the rest back in one go. He set it back on the table with a thunk and stood.

“Thank you for your kindness, Natasha. I’ll take the couch.”

Natasha took it for the bid for privacy that it was, not a dismissal, and nodded as he walked to the couch with the over-dignified walk of the drunk. She cleaned up the table, grabbed a couple Gatorades out of the refrigerator and took a moment to chug one for herself.  Then she set the other on the coffee table in front of the couch, where Steve sat with his head in his hands. She didn’t think it’d help him much or that he’d even get a hangover, but he’d appreciate the gesture anyway. She squeezed his shoulder gently and walked to the bedroom with the rest of her Russkiy Standart.

She stripped to her undershirt and panties and settled herself into Steve’s bed. She took a swig of her vodka, pulled out her headphones and connected them to her phone. It only took a few swipes to find the song she was looking for: We’ll Meet Again by Vera Lynn.

She listened to the warbling chorus before she drifted off to sleep and she tried to imagine Steve and Bucky as they might have been that night: as young as they looked and full of hope, laughing and singing off-key through the streets of a war-torn London, just trying to blow off steam between battles in the fight for a better world.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanons: Thor gave Natasha the good stuff for Steve because it's the first time she ever asked for anything. Also, Steve drank quickly because he kept starting to sober up.


End file.
